Category 5 storm

No, not Katrina, media coverage of the Iraqi constitution. Indeed, media coverage of all of Iraq. Luckily we've got Mark Steyn to put things in perspective.

Iraqi nation-building coverage is like one almighty cable-news Hurricane Ahmed. The network correspondents climb into their oilskins and waders and wrap themselves round a lamppost on the boardwalk and insist that civil war's about to make landfall any minute now, devastating the handover/elections/constitution. But it never does. Hurricane Ahmed is simply the breezy back and forth of healthy politicking.

Remember the Afghan war? On Nov. 7, 2001, the New York Times' Maureen Dowd was sneering at the Northern Alliance for being a lot of useless layabout deadbeats. "They smoke and complain more than they fight," she scoffed. A couple of days later, Kabul fell so swiftly that on Nov. 14 Dowd switched smoothly -- with only the mildest case of columnar whiplash -- to whining that the hitherto layabout Northern Alliance had "embarrassed" us with their "savage force."

That's the way our Iraqi allies work, too. They have to be nudged along -- which is why the U.S. strategy of hard (or hard-ish) deadlines works well -- but in the end they get there.

"What makes a good constitution?" asked National Review's Rick Brookhiser the other day. "Standoffs and horsetrades, frozen in time."